Apocalypse Now Now Page 14

  ‘By the Singer of Souls,’ I blurt out again. I’m on a roll in the not-thinking-before-you-speak department tonight.

  ‘You are a smarty-pants,’ Katinka says, raising her eyebrows. ‘Osiraii legends say that he was put in place to guard the gateways of space and time, that he is both the spirit of a place and a manifestation of its mythology.’ She shrugs. ‘Anyways, that shit is way too woo-woo for me. I’m more a sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll kinda girl. My mother and sisters sheltered me and pretended I was a girl to the Flock. First opportunity I got the hell out of Dodge and created a life where I live by my rules.’

  ‘These days Tinks is a body entrepreneur,’ Ronin says.

  ‘That’s what I love about you, Jackie,’ she says, patting his cheek. ‘Always tactful. Yes, when I’m not tending bar, I’m a working girl and my warriors are those slain by nine to fives and bitter wives. Although admittedly my methods are a little different.’ She takes the cigarette Jackie offers her.

  ‘Methods?’ I say.

  She smiles and raises her little finger, and my mind explodes with scenes of orgies, bodies writhing together in a rhythmic concerto of flesh, lust and bodily fluids.

  In an instant I’m back and gripping the bar with both my hands and shaking my head slowly as the last of the sinful memories drain from my mind.

  ‘What was that?’ I say.

  ‘The Osiraii are master illusionists,’ Ronin says with a grin. ‘Who needs the Internet when you’ve got Tinks?’

  Katinka laughs. ‘Well, I’ll try to take that as a compliment, Jackie-O,’ she says. ‘But what about you, candy cane?’ She eyes me up and down, her mouth curving in a smile as Jackie lights her cigarette for her. ‘What battles are you fighting?’

  ‘My girlfriend,’ I say. ‘She’s missing.’

  ‘Oh, they all are, honey,’ she says, tapping her chest. ‘Emotionally distant. Empty inside.’

  ‘No, I mean she’s really gone. Like as in disappeared, vanished.’

  ‘Well, then you’re lucky,’ she says. ‘All you need to do is find her.’

  Ronin is looking around the club uneasily. ‘Tinks, we need some intel.’

  ‘Of course, Jackie,’ she says. ‘Anything for you, sugar.’

  ‘Thing is, we’re looking for a glowing man,’ he says. ‘An Obambo.’

  Katinka nods. ‘One of the strangest men I’ve ever had.’

  ‘You had sex with him?’ I say.

  ‘Well, let’s just say we didn’t sit and play sudoku all night, sweetness,’ she says. ‘But it might have been better if we had. He was an actor in one of the Flesh Palace films. One night he came to my room to talk. And, well, one thing led to another. But he was distracted and kept talking about his dead wife and kid. It’s a bit of a slap in the face for a lady with my considerable skills.’

  ‘Where can we find him?’ I say.

  ‘That’s where you’re out of luck, boys. A while back the Queen took an unnatural interest in him. Haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘An unnatural interest,’ Ronin says. ‘That’s the only kind of interest she has. How is Her Majesty?’ Ronin says.

  Katinka shrugs and blows a delicate smoke ring. ‘The usual; cruel, ambitious, horny.’

  ‘Think you can get us an audience?’

  ‘I don’t think you need to worry about that,’ Katinka says, nodding to something behind us.

  We turn to see four guys approaching us. Their skin is slightly grey and mottled, and they smell like an old cat lady’s flat. ‘Her Majesty wishes to see you,’ one of them says in a slow, drawling monotone.

  Ronin nods. ‘Lead the way, spiderman.’

  It’s only when they turn that I see the distended, bulbous arachnid bodies jutting from the backs of their necks, black but coloured with sickly yellows and bright warning reds.

  ‘Stop staring,’ Ronin whispers in my ear. ‘Nobody ever said they were pretty.’ He downs his drink. ‘Come on. I’d hate to keep Her Majesty waiting.’

  Katinka reaches across the bar and grabs Ronin’s arm. ‘Try not to become a fallen warrior, OK, Jackie boy?’

  Jackie laughs. ‘She can’t still hold a grudge, can she?’

  South African Military History Journal

  The Nostradamus of the Transvaal

  By Neels Marais

  The title of Siener is most often associated with Niklaas van Rensburg, adviser to the Boer general Koos de la Rey and mystic, whom many Afrikaners believe had the power of prophecy and far-sight. Lesser known is Dawid van Rensburg, Niklaas’s younger brother, who was also rumoured to be born with a special sensitivity that some believed was a gift from God to help the Boer nation in their struggle against the English.

  In contrast to Niklaas’s strict spiritual moralism, Dawid grew into a rather eccentric and antisocial man. He left home at a young age, and travelled widely in and around South Africa, eventually returning to his people many years later with a child in tow. He never told anyone who the mother of his beloved daughter was. The few accounts of her describe her as a pretty, dark-haired child. Niklaas had already established himself as a Siener and welcomed Dawid back with open arms, but it soon became apparent that Dawid had travelled a very different path to his brother.

  While Niklaas’s prophecies were heavily steeped in biblical language, Dawid developed a form of Afrikaner shamanism which drew heavily on the indigenous cultures and included divination, magic and spiritualism. He had become a smoker of marijuana and a chewer of the Khoisan herb kougoed, believing both to be potent enhancers of his abilities. He also spoke about the ingesting of the ‘glowing blood’, which gave him a revelatory experience that would impact heavily on both his life philosophy and prophetical output. This ‘glowing blood’ may have been a reference to a naturally occurring hallucinogenic, perhaps the seeds of the morning glory plant.

  Niklaas disapproved of his brother’s ways but never publicly denounced him, correctly fearing that the super-religious Boer community would cast him out, or worse. But after Dawid began telling his prophecies to all who would listen, Niklaas became convinced that Dawid’s abilities were not a gift from God, but the by-product of a demonic possession. It may have been a prophecy Niklaas considered particularly heretical, the so-called ‘Great Battle’ prophecy, that convinced the elder Siener of Dawid’s satanic connection:

  Two brothers arise from the womb,

  Intertwined brethren of creation and destruction

  The Mantis and the Octopus wrestle for supremacy

  Children of Chaos and Children of Light

  balancing on creation’s razor blade

  The Glowing ones show the way

  to the vehicles which are the key.

  Many believe that the Octopus was a metaphor for the many ‘tentacles’ of the spreading imperialism of the British Empire, while the ‘vehicles’ may have been an astrological reference to Ezekiel.

  Anthropologists have pointed to the fact these symbols and themes have also been found in an Ndebele funeral song that calls for the dead to be sung across the chasm of space and time into the land of the ancestors. It may well have been that Dawid encountered this oral tradition in his travels.

  But it was the substitution of the San Mantis God for the Christian Yahweh that was more than Niklaas could bear, and he swore to exorcise the Devil from Dawid’s heart. But he never got the chance. Dawid’s commando was attacked by the British and he was killed in the fighting. His daughter was captured, but her ultimate fate is unknown. It is widely believed that along with Niklaas van Rensburg’s daughter Hester, she died in a British concentration camp.

  8

  THE ZOMBIE HORROR NINJA SHOW

  ‘THE BODIES ARE controlled by venom injected into the spinal cord,’ Ronin whispers as we walk down the long staircase that descends into the bowels of the club. The stink of the place is unbearable. The smell you get when a rat dies under a floorboard? Distil that into its purest form. Eau de decay. I gag a couple of times and have to steady myself against the
wall. ‘They’re zombies, essentially,’ Ronin continues. ‘That is until the creepy little spider assholes wear the body out and have to latch onto a new host.’

  The staircase deposits us onto a heaving, phantasmagoric dance floor. A decaying corpse in latex bondage gear grins at me as it shimmies past, yanking a short chain connected to the spiked collar of a large and hairy middle-aged man who crawls after it.

  The bass rumbles through my chest and strobe lights pulsate, highlighting naked zombies hanging in cages from the ceiling. They sway back and forth and peel flesh from their bones to throw to human punters watching them from below. ‘Take it all off,’ a sweaty guy in a suit shouts as we pass by him. His tie is loose about his neck and his face is flushed. The zombie obliges, peeling off muscle and tendon from her face until only bone remains. The guy hoots and slaps his friends on the backs.

  Our escorts push their way through the sweaty bodies on the dance floor and lead us through a doorway that’s guarded by more zombies. We step into a dim corridor lined with more doorways. A quick glance affirms my suspicion: we’re in the studio where creature porn is made. I think I’d be more excited if it didn’t smell like death and decay.

  A dressing-room door left slightly ajar gives me the opportunity to glimpse a celebrity. Through the slit I see the Flesh Palace’s most successful tokoloshe lounging in a chair, chewing on a fat cigar and watching us uninterestedly with his cruel pink piggy eyes. He’s wearing a red velvet gown and a fat gold medallion hangs among his matted green chest hair. A naked zombie kneels at his feet scratching his large grey belly and feeding him something that looks suspiciously like a rodent. Rumpelforeskin grins smugly and then raises his hand to give us the middle finger.

  Each new doorway offers a glimpse into another nightmarish set. Clearly the type of films I’ve been distributing were only scratching the surface of the kind of depravity that Zombiewood produces. We see a young guy being held down by two spidered zombies, while a third rips chunks of flesh from his thighs with its teeth. ‘Oh, mistress, I’ve been a bad boy,’ the man groans. ‘Eat me, eat me.’ On film, from a distance and thinking this was make-believe, I would have thought this was groundbreaking. From where I stand now, it makes me gag again.

  ‘Easy, tiger,’ Ronin says, putting his hand on my shoulder. I’m forced to swallow sour bile as we continue, grateful when we’re led out of the studio to a large ornate set of doors.

  I look up at the carved dark wood. It depicts nightmares and atrocities on a level I’ve never seen before. Hell has been shaped from the wood, spidered humans performing gross acts of torture. Two zombies in military cargo trousers and black muscle vests stand before us, necrotic muscle Marys flexing, and grinning toothlessly when we’re presented to them.

  One grabs me by the collar and shoves me against the wall to frisk me for weapons. The smell of him is overpowering and I just pray that there is no cavity search. Ronin swears as they remove Warchild and Hagaz from under his coat, but he doesn’t have much choice. Satisfied that we’re not hiding any other guns, knives or insecticide, they swing open the doors and shove us through.

  A quick glance around shows we’re in some kind of arachnid-zombie-dominatrix sex dungeon, which, as it turns out, is not nearly as cool as it sounds. The carvings on the door were entirely realistic. We’re in Hell.

  The walls are decorated with naked people trapped in rancid black spiderwebs that drip viscous fluid. The poor trapped souls are in stages of life/death/decomposition. They moan, scream and call out in pathetic voices, creating a sonic tapestry of despair.

  ‘Ronin,’ I whisper, resisting the urge to cling to his sleeve like a little child.

  ‘Steady,’ he whispers back. ‘Try not to look at them.’

  It’s like telling someone not to look down when they’re on a high wire. I can’t help but look at the horror around us. A voice calls from above and I look up to see a man plastered to the ceiling by webs, trying desperately to free an arm from the disgusting black threads. It’s useless. Even if he could free himself his legs look like they’ve been gnawed away. He’s half a man stuck to the ceiling by zombie spiders. It’s not looking good for him.

  In the centre of the room is a dais surrounded by zombie soldiers. They lounge around like spoilt dogs. Spoilt dead dogs. Their eye sockets are hollow and black, and flesh hangs from their decaying bodies in strips. They watch us eagerly with their glassy eyes, like kids pressing their faces up against the window of a candy store.

  The thing lounging on a throne on the dais is worst of all the nightmares in this place. Thankfully most of her is covered by a bloodstained Victorian bodice and skirt, but the skin I can see is red and raw, like it’s been sliced away with a potato peeler. Her face is bone-white, except for dark and suppurating wounds which look like tears beneath her eyes. She holds a parasol and taps it rhythmically against her knees like a funeral drum.

  The facial decay is just foreplay. The real nightmare is her eyes, two dark pools of tar – pools of tar where the bodies of nuns that have been violated and murdered have been dumped. They watch us approach with a mixture of curiosity, lust and I-wanna-suck-out-your-bone-marrow. A huge distended red body bulges from the back of her neck and it seems to pulsate slightly as she moves.

  Ronin bows at the foot of the dais, grabbing my shoulder and forcing me to do the same. The Queen shrugs her gruesome body from the throne and saunters down to us. She extends her hand daintily toward him. He takes it and kisses it quickly. She floats her hand gently across to me and I follow his example, the stench thick in my nostrils as I barely touch the back of her cold hand with my lips.

  She spins her parasol as she saunters back and forth in front of us, and with a lurch in my stomach I realise that it’s made from skin stretched over bone. The Queen of the Anansi is into arts and crafts. Perfect.

  ‘Blackblood,’ she says, her voice like the sound of two alley cats fighting, ‘I told you if you ever came back I’d kill you.’

  Ronin smiles. ‘Oh? I thought you were just exaggerating, Sergeant.’

  She pushes the parasol under his chin. ‘That’s Queen to you.’

  He shrugs. ‘Old habits die hard.’

  The Queen smiles cruelly. ‘So will you, I hope. I want to enjoy it.’

  She turns her eyes to me. ‘You’ve brought a child along with you? A gift of young flesh to buy mercy?’

  ‘I know mercy’s not your style,’ Ronin says.

  He’s right. I know the Queen’s type. She’s just like Anwar; a bully. She isn’t going to let us go, she just wants to play with her food for a little bit. ‘We’ve come for the Obambo,’ I say and force myself to look up into those terrifying black eyes.

  ‘You’re making demands of me?’ the Queen says. She puts the point of her parasol to my throat, lifting my chin. ‘Well, it’s refreshing at least. Too many sycophants are not good for one. Yes, I had your glowing man but I traded him for something much, much better.’ She smiles, showing her black teeth and bloody gums. She sighs and leans in and sniffs at my neck. I try to suppress the shudder but I can’t. ‘Urfrog?’ she says, sticking her bottom lip out like she’s a little girl sulking about not being able to play with a favourite toy. ‘You don’t play nice, Ronin. Young bodies last so much longer. But no matter, we can still have fun with you.’ She waves a hand at her zombie guards. ‘Put them in the cage. That’s why you walked into certain death, Ronin? Because you’re looking for an Obambo? I must admit I’m a little disappointed. I thought you’d have a far better reason than that to die.’

  ‘Tone is coming to shut you down,’ Ronin says.

  The Queen smiles. ‘MK6 is a diverse and changing organisation, Blackbood. You know that better than I. Sometimes the rules can change without warning.’

  Ronin stares at her for a moment, as if looking at one of those patterns that make a 3D picture if you stare at it hard enough. ‘Mirth,’ he says finally, spitting the word out.

  ‘I never understood why you hated the man. He m
ade you what you are,’ the Queen says.

  Ronin grins and it looks more a wolf baring its teeth. ‘His giggling always pissed me off.’

  ‘Not very becoming, I agree. Thankfully when you’re powerful you can do whatever you want. You probably could have stopped him if you’d stayed,’ she says and clicks her fingers. ‘But you always were just a sideshow, Ronin.’

  Zombies force us through a low concrete passage and into a large room like the one that hosts the zombie strip club. Except instead of throbbing techno this room serenades its patrons with classical music. We’re dragged between elegant circular tables adorned with white tablecloths and silver candelabras.

  I look around desperately and see some surprisingly familiar faces. Darlene Matthews, the soapie star, sits at one of the tables dabbing her mouth with a napkin. Gert van Zyl, musician, actor and reality game show presenter, is gingerly scooping brains from a severed human head on a silver platter. ‘We’re being held hostage,’ I shout to them. ‘Help. Call the cops.’ Gert smiles and raises his glass to us as we’re dragged past.

  Politicians are delicately sucking the marrow out of dismembered pinkie fingers, and several members of the national cricket team sip congealed blood from Martini glasses. The Cape Town elite, it seems, are into zombie chic gourmet cannibalism. Fucking poseurs.

  ‘MK6 should have closed this down a long time ago,’ Ronin whispers.

  ‘But they haven’t,’ I say as I struggle against the zombie’s iron grip. ‘Please say you’ve got a plan.’

  ‘I’m more of a spontaneous kind of guy,’ he says with a maniac grin.

  We’re pushed toward a large cage made out of bones, kitsch even for a zombie queen. I brace my feet against the cage to stop the zombie from hoisting me inside, but he grabs the back of my shirt and lobs me through the cage door. I land hard on the mat and my glasses skitter across the floor. I scramble to my feet to reclaim them.

  ‘You should get one of those straps,’ Ronin says casually. ‘You know, the ones that hold your glasses in place?’